Teachers’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic: Shifts, challenges and opportunities

Reports of teachers’ work intensification have become common over the last decade, so it seems important to ask: how are teachers coping with the additional demands and changes brought by COVID-19? In this paper, we present initial data from a large, system-wide survey of teachers in NSW public schools, undertaken during the first phase of the pandemic in Australia, in order to document the nature of these shifts. These data provide teachers’ voice on some of the challenges, and difficulties they face in relation to professional work during the pandemic; and also the opportunities they have identified within the flux of change that has occurred in 2020. This study considers: 1. teaching in ‘COVID-wary classrooms’; and 2. teaching via remote learning. Heavy demands for up-skilling, particularly for the second of these shifts, teaching via remote learning, and the development and implementation of new public health understanding within schools, have created new and additional challenges for the teaching profession

Labour commodification in the employment heartland: Union responses to teachers' temporary work

This article analyses the commodification of professional labour and union responses to these processes within the employment heartland. It explores the category of fixed-contract or ‘temporary’ employment using Australian public school teaching as the empirical lens. Established to address intensifying conditions of labour market insecurity, the union-led creation of the temporary category was intended to partly decommodify labour by providing intermediate security between permanent and ‘casual’ employment. However, using historical case and contemporary survey data, we discern that escalation of temporary teacher numbers and intensifying work-effort demands concurrently increased insecurity within the teacher workforce, constituting recommodification. The paper contributes to scant literature on unions and commodification, highlighting that within the current marketised context, labour commodification may occur through contradictory influences at multiple levels, and that union responses to combat this derogation of work must similarly be multi-level and sustained

Differentiation as a Consequence of Choice and Decentralization Reforms—Conditions for Teachers’ Competence Development

This paper examines the conditions for teacher competence development as they relate to the current restructured governance of the education sector in Sweden. In reviewing the literature, contextual factors in the workplace are often pointed out as central to conditions for competence development. However, we argue that a sector-level approach is useful in examining and explaining competence development conditions, especially in times of governance change. We describe how a workplace’s geographical location and budgetary situation, along with its size and age, relate to how teachers experience their working conditions. The findings indicate that the organization of work at a local workplace level impacts the conditions for competence development. Moreover, various regional and local characteristics seem to affect the conditions for competence development in that the organization and governance of the education sector create different conditions for competence development

Submission to 'Valuing Australia’s Teachers: Parliamentary Inquiry into the Status of the Teaching Profession'

Parliament of Australia website. Together, over the last five years, through a series of research projects, the above colleagues at the University of Sydney, Curtin University, University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden), have examined the issues of work, workload, and conditions of work of Australian school teachers and school leaders, drawing international comparison to Sweden and elsewhere. We have reported (in conjunction with the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), and State School Teachers Union of Western Australia (SSTUWA)) on the largest, recent survey of teachers’ work and workplace conditions in the country through input and extensive responses from over 20,000 teachers and school leaders. We welcome this Parliamentary Inquiry as both timely and of great importance

The case for assessable in-class team-based learning

In-class assessable team-based learning aims to motivate students to do pre-class reading and participate inclass via team quizzes. Pre-class preparation allows teachers to address learning gaps using individual quizzes, while team quizzes promote peer interaction and active learning. The pilot project replicated Michaelsen’s approach with the aim of improving learning in diverse student cohorts with minimal impact on staff time. The aim of the research was to report the replication of this approach in the Australian context and the impact on both students and staff. Academics with diverse classes wishing to explore this innovative approach to in-class team-based learning should find this research helpful

What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education?

The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? There was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability. Against the backdrop of these themes, the conference generated discussion and debate where provocations and points of agreement and disagreement about issues of social justice and the mobilisation of school autonomy reform were raised. As an important output of this discussion, we asked participants to write a short response to the guiding conference question. The following are these responses which range from philosophical considerations, systems and governance perspectives, national particularities and teacher and principal perspectives

Teachers’ voices and their unions

Mihajla Gavin et al. address the importance of teacher unions as the collective voice of teachers to counter policies that worsen teacher working conditions and student learning environments